Obama Wants to Leave the Oval Office to a Pro-Science POTUS

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Obama Wants to Leave the Oval Office to a Pro-Science POTUS

President Obama speaks at the Frontiers conference in Pittsburgh, Oct, 13, 2016.

Bryan Derballa for WIRED

Barack Obama won't be president for much longer. But while he still is, he's seeking to cement his legacy as a booster of science and technology. Appearing today at the White House Frontiers Conference in Pittsburgh, Obama suggested that support of science has set one candidate apart from the other in 2016's divisive presidential election. He pushed the seemingly non-controversial idea that only through science can the US keep extending the frontiers of human knowledge and accomplish more as a country. As his presidency comes to an end, Obama clearly hopes that the next president will lead the way on government backing for science. Or, more plainly: please don’t mess this up.

"We don’t listen to science just when it fits our ideologies," Obama said. "That’s the path to ruin." Sixty years ago, when the Russians beat us to space, Obama said, the US didn’t deny that Sputnik was up there. "That wouldn’t have worked! We acknowledged the facts and we built a space program almost overnight—and then beat them to the moon." But in the 21st century, climate change denialists are putting propaganda ahead of reality. "I get so riled up when I hear people willfully ignore facts," Obama said.

Though he didn’t mention him by name, Obama was clearly undercutting GOP candidate Donald Trump, who in this election season has so often pushed ideas that reflect the reality he wants to live in—science be damned. Some of the world's greatest innovations can also serve the cause of obfuscation, Obama said. "Everything on the Internet looks like it might be true,” he said Obama. "In this political season we’ve seen you just say stuff. So everything suddenly becomes contested."

Obama also implicitly pushed back against Trump's anti-immigration stance, pointing out that the six US scientists and researchers who just won Nobel Prizes were all immigrants. Science and technology in fact need to become more inclusive in the US, especially for young women and people of color. Science is not just for "boys in hoodies," Obama said. "We want Jamal and Maria sitting next to Jimmy and Johnny. We don’t want them overlooked for a job of the future."

Opening up science and technology is just part of the work Obama said was still to left to do. The president said he only got two terms to do what he could, which drew boos from the crowd. "But that’s all right! We run our leg and we hand off the baton." The question is whether the person who takes the handoff carries the baton forward or chucks it in the trash.

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